The Red Book: Democratic Failure During Britain’s 1971 Entry into Europe
A Brexit demonstration in December 2018. Photo by Jonathan Miller.
“There is something almost uncanny, something which makes the pulse beat a little quicker, in watching a whole nation instinctively cut through and thrust aside details, pretences, trivialities, and go to the heart of the matter. Untutored, uninvited, and indeed unwelcomed, they have insisted upon discerning the one simple, overwhelmingly important question: to be or not to be, to be ourselves or not to be ourselves,” said Enoch Powell, Conservative Member of Parliament, in a 1971 speech in Doncaster.
While the British public had apathetically watched, the UK government had spent the past twenty years debating joining various treaties and organizations that would have tied Britain closer to Europe. Each time, they didn’t commit. In 1971, extremely pro-Europe Edward Heath was now Prime Minister and was pushing actively for Britain to join the European Economic Community. A decision was imminent, and for the first time, the British people clamored for a say.
Enoch Powell was the loudest anti-European voice in Parliament before, during, and after the 1972 entrance of Britain into the European Economic Community. In the same speech, he explained: “The European Economic Community, despite its name, is political; and the question of British membership is a political question, purely a political question.” He continued, “whatever reasons there are for British entry, they must be not economic, but political, and if the decision to enter is right on political grounds, we must accept the economic consequences, whatever they may be.”
When it came to Europe, Powell spent his entire career voting against relations with Europe on principle, regardless of economic or diplomatic concerns. Powell argued that entering the European Economic Community could only be understood as a decision on national sovereignty. He stated, “The question which the people of this country will have proposed to them is: will you or will you not, continue to be governed by the Queen in Parliament? It is no less than that.”
The debate that raged across Britain about joining the E.E.C. mirrored the discussion before the 2016 referendum. Many of the arguments made by Powell popped up again in the mouths of leading Brexiteers like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. Many today view the bitter feelings of anti-European Leave voters as xenophobic and isolationist, and that xenophobia and isolationism are rampant among Leavers is undoubted. But the anti-European bitterness has been around far longer, from the very beginning. It started with Parliament’s 1972 decision to pass the Government’s Resolution on the European Communities. That pivotal vote dragged Britain into the European fold. But the degree to which that vote reflected the will of the people remains in question.
In January of 1972, Prime Minister Heath signed the Treaty of Accession, a treaty between the European Economic Community and the British government agreeing to its entrance. But for Britain to officially join, Parliament had to agree. That agreement was by no means guaranteed.
Former Prime Minister Edward Heath, from a 1989 television appearance. Photo by Open Media Limited.
At the time, the party positions on Europe were the opposite of today’s. Conservatives were pro-market (in favor of entering the E.E.C.), and Labour was deeply anti-Europe (and therefore opposed to entering the E.E.C.). Heath knew his position was delicate. He had a weak government, and if the MPs voted along party lines, the bill making membership a matter of British law would most likely have been defeated. A defeat or a slim majority would have devastated his government, and most likely led to an election.
A group of pro-market Labour MPs who were vital to the bill’s passage had decided to vote with the Labour Whip against joining the Common Market. The bill was on the verge of defeat. Out of desperation, a secretive back-channel campaign was born.
The Conservative strategists got together to rally votes. Hugh Rossi, the Conservative Whip, divided the votes into three categories: “robust” were the pro-Europeans who would undoubtedly vote in favor, and were marked with a blue check; “the shits” were those who would never be persuaded, and were noted with a brown pencil; “the wets” were the larger group of undecided MPs, and were marked with red checks. “The wets” were the targets.
John Roper, a pro-market Labour MP, was one of a group of Labour MPs quietly working with the Conservative majority. Roper kept the infamous red book in which he organized the campaign to get the bill through, with every parliamentary member and target listed. He later explained, “the tactic was to try and ensure that we got the bill through by having a phalanx of twenty to twenty-five Labour pro-Europeans who were abstaining right through the bill... I was able to keep records throughout the bill, and I knew the people who I could rely on, and I knew others who I could turn to when it was necessary.”
The problem for Labour was that their constituents were vehemently against joining the European Economic Community. If Labour voters knew that a significant chunk of Labour MPs were going against their stated desires and robbing them of their democratic say, they would have felt betrayed, and the party would have been devastated in the next election. And getting the bill through Parliament was not a matter of a single vote, but a series of different votes on different elements over several months. If the same group of Labour MPs consistently abstained, it would be evident to their constituents that their representatives were voting (or pointedly choosing not to vote) against their wishes.
It wasn’t a simple matter of turning votes and gaining support from the opposition for a single vote. Bipartisan voting is a normal and accepted part of government, and sometimes politicians will openly vote or abstain on their conscience rather than on the wishes of their constituents. That’s not what was happening here: Labour MPs were secretly helping the Conservatives get a bill their constituents did not want through Parliament while publicly pretending they were against its passage.
These MPs knew precisely what they were doing. To protect the Labour Party and keep the back-channel deals secret, they mixed up who abstained each time so that it seemed accidental. Roper explained, “We were able to vary the abstentions and thereby to ensure the bill got through but caused the minimal disruption to the parliamentary party.”
The red book worked. MP Shirley Williams, a member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet, later said, “People disappeared, they went to the films, they just didn’t show up and so forth. There was quite a bit of quiet understanding that there were certain amendments where it was better for people to just find themselves speaking at a meeting so that they wouldn’t be there.”
Another member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet, MP Tony Benn, was a Eurosceptic and firmly against E.E.C. accession. Looking back on that time, he doesn’t pull his punches: “It was a coup d’état by a political class who didn’t believe in popular sovereignty, that’s what it was, it was coup d’état. … the power was seized by parliamentarians, they seized power that didn’t belong to them, and they used it to take away the rights from those they represented. That’s how I saw it.”
Today, in both Britain and the United States, much of Boris Johnson’s and Donald Trump’s populist support is built on a foundation of anger against a wealthy, urban political elite. In his January article, “I’m a Remainer. So why do I feel more and more sympathy for Leave voters?” Joseph Harker, the Guardian’s deputy opinion editor, critiques the way the Remain elite talk about Leave voters. Discussing arguments that don’t convince rural, working-class Brexiteers, he notes that the “continuously repeated phrase: ‘you were lied to,’” won’t work. He continues, “as if Leave voters are so gullible they’d believe anything politicians tell them: in fact, they voted for Brexit because they totally distrusted politicians.”
The inability of the government to leave the EU did not reassure the working-class Leave voters. It’s been over three years since the June 2016 vote, and the most recent Brexit action has been another extension, this time to January 31, 2020. Every day, groups of Leave voters carrying “Leave Means Leave” signs stand outside of Parliament. As Harker notes, “All these Remainer arguments do is make people feel that their protest vote is being ignored, and that the establishment voices just want things to carry on as before.”
Nigel Farage of the U.K. Independence Party celebrates with Leavers.
In a 2018 article in the right-of-center Spectator, the writer Lionel Shriver argued that Britain would not end up leaving the EU because the elite, dominant class of London Remainers would not let that happen. She wrote, “Powerful people, by definition, get what they want… since people powerful in the present like being powerful, they implicitly fancy the status quo. Hence, they do not, in the main, want the UK to leave the EU.” And, as she noted, preventing Brexit would result in negligible consequences to the Remainers: “The real movers and shakers will pay no price. Only Leave voters will suffer—in private. Nobody else will care.” A non-Brexit would ensure that “more than half the British electorate will grow bitter, disillusioned with democracy, and cynical about politics.”
Brexit will undeniably be terrible for the British economy. It will cause a myriad of problems in healthcare, agriculture, and potentially lead to violence and political unrest in Northern Ireland. There are far more good reasons to remain in Europe than there are to leave it. Brexit has the real potential to be disastrous, and had it failed to occur, Britain would have averted a genuine national crisis.
But if Brexit had never “gotten done,” that would have precipitated a different crisis: the crisis of a disenfranchised public facing its own powerlessness. In 1971, Enoch Powell argued that the UK should not consider the relationship between Britain and Europe on economic, security, or diplomatic concerns. It was, and is, only a political question. Then as in 2016, that political question was framed as one of national sovereignty. But the underlying political question has always been different: who truly makes the decisions for the United Kingdom? And what happens when the answer isn’t the public?
Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community was an exercise in sidestepping the will of the people; it was a secret deal brokered between elite members of Parliament who believed they knew better than those who elected them. In an indirect democracy, the representatives are expected to sometimes vote against their constituents and with their consciences, and in turn, their electors may vote them out. But when entire governments make secret deals and hide their real opinions to both ignore their constituents and maintain their party’s power, that is not an example of a functional indirect democracy. That is a conspiracy of the governing class.
Britain’s membership in the EU rests on an undemocratic foundation. Little wonder, then, that current Brexiteers feel that the politicians have betrayed them, and the government and elite political class do not represent their interests or care about their opinions.
In hindsight, I believe that joining in 1972 was the correct move. It follows that no matter how uncomfortable it makes me, I do think the secretive Labour MPs knew better than their constituents. But knowing what is right for the international and economic position of a nation is different from doing what is right for its democracy. And all democracies are fragile.
Maeve Flaherty is a junior at Columbia College. She is a former summer fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the president of NYC Restrooms4All, a public bathroom advocacy campaign.
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